This blog follows a group of family and friends that love to explore and experience adventure. Through various options of travel whether by car, ATV, Jeep, or just a plain old pair of hiking boots we look for fun and exciting ways to learn about our world. Come along and get inspired. You might just find your own route to adventure.

Friday, September 7, 2018

Another Happy Place Part 2

Last time I reviewed our trip to Disney's Magic Kingdom while on a week long vacation to Florida. As promised, I'm going to pick up on that trip at Disney's Hollywood Studios. Best tip I can tell you here is that you can get a fastpass for the rides online before you come (30 days for us regular folks or 60 I think if you stay on property). Do it. Lines are tough in this heat and humidity. You can actually do three passes per day of your pass. When your three prebooked passes are used up you can get a new fastpass like normal. The catch is that if you book a late show you will not get to get a new fastpass until it is used. Also if its a popular ride plan on the passes going fast. Now, I'm going to remind you that Disney World is broken up into different lands, each one with a different theme and their own individual attractions to entice people to visit. Each land has their own entry fee and parking lot, another fee, by the way. I was sure that Hollywood Studios would be one of my favorite places in Disney World, it is home to the Tower of Terror, after all. So was it everything I imagined? Well... The Tower of Terror was great. It was the first thing we did upon arrival. I loved to see that old Hollywood era theme of the ride again. I was devastated when Disneyland remodeled their tower into the Guardian's Of The Galaxy but that's another story. Disney World's tower was different, though. This one doesn't just take you to the top and drop you, no. This one moves through a strange, Twilight Zone themed corridor before being locked into the elevator shaft. This added element brought just a little more depth to the story being told on this ride that I really enjoyed. Of course, the feeling of butterflies swimming in your stomach by being dropped on a crazy elevator is what keeps people coming back time after time and as always, was worth the forty five minute wait. There is no doubt that the Tower of Terror is the highlight of Hollywood Studios. We moved on to check out Rock'n Rollercoaster featuring Aerosmith. This was a ride that most everyone in our group was looking forward to. It's a ride that you hear about. It's a ride that people say you have to do. It's a ride that...sucks. Now, before you get angry with me, let me explain. The music is great. I love Aerosmith. The speed, much like the music is top notch and I love it but my complaint is the decor. With the exception of a brief moment when the coaster travels outside, the ride is basically a dark tunnel that is supposed to be the streets of Los Angeles, you know that because all you see is big green replicas of street signs of significant streets in L.A. To make matters worse, this ride is to my knowledge, the biggest offender of the use of neon paint that I have ever seen. That's it. That's all there is on this ride. It's a very fast trip through neon Los Angeles. I couldn't believe that people were standing in line for an hour and a half to ride it. No thanks. I wish I could say that our visit to Hollywood Studios improved but it didn't. We tried twice to get into the Indiana Jones stunt show but we didn't get in. We probably could have if we had tried harder but the place was packed and we just didn't find it worth our time to wait, especially after finding out that we had already rode all the rides in the land. Yeah, Hollywood Studios is all about the live shows. If you're not into those, it's going to be a short day, which it was for us. We went back to our rental house and kicked it by the pool after wandering around. We saw a few things but over all we just weren't thrilled with being there. Star Tours is always worth the ride but it wasn't any different from Disneyland. The oversized AT-AT was cool to see, I must admit. Now I wouldn't want to leave you on a sour note so I'm going to tell you about one place that I think is a must see when visiting Disney's Hollywood Studios. In fact, I think it ranks right up there with the Tower Of Terror. That place is the 50's Prime Time Cafe. Here you are in the 1950's, complete with meatloaf and all the classic sitcoms you can handle. This is Momma's kitchen and your waiter or waitress will not let you forget it. Here you had better use the words "please" and "thank you" when you're supposed to if you want to avoid being reprimanded, oh and don't you dare put your elbows on the table. This restaurant is a hoot and an experience that shouldn't be missed. By the way, the food is pretty good too. So, there you have it. This was my opinion of Hollywood Studios. I won't say that my opinion is shared by everyone else in the group, but they don't write articles on my blog, so there. It's really up to each family to make up their mind on wither they like a place or not and if you're going to make a trip all the way to Disney World, you definitely need to visit at least once. Just make sure you eat at Momma's. Next time I'll bring it back to a happier tone when we visit Epcot. Here we got to see the entire world without leaving Disney World. See you next time and thanks for stopping in.(Add by Misty)- We did get to see Muppet Vision 3D while we were there. It was a fun flash back to when we would go see this show in Disney California Adventures. Brandan always relates to the two grumpy old men in the balcony so much. Hollywood Studios was not a bad day. It was a hot and humid day. And really if you compared the parks, this one just wasn't as awesome as the others. Not a waste of time, see it once, but then spend more time at the Animal Kingdom or the Magic Kingdom. Brandan.